Why Devra Davis wants the world to hang up and take notice

American scientist Devra Davis has an impressive record in public health, helping to expose the dangers of tobacco, asbestos and passive smoking. Next on her list? The always-on, every-present mobile phone.

By Ian Cuthbertson

December 9, 2015 — 11.52am

When I meet Devra Davis in the foyer of a waterfront hotel in Sydney's Woolloomooloo, there's a moment when her siege mentality shows. The tireless American campaigner on the dangers of mobile phone radiation, who believes they should be used at all times as far from the body as possible, is posing for photographs with clunky retro handsets. She always carries three types with her in her handbag, including these comically colourful old-school models. Asked by the photographer to hold one to each ear, she baulks. "Don't make me look like Mickey Mouse," she says. "I don't want to look like a quack."

Though the science in her 2010 book, Disconnect: the Truth About Mobile-Phone Radiation, has been questioned, even pilloried, by some experts in the field, Davis is not an ill-informed fraud shouting her way around the world. In fact, she has a long and distinguished career in science behind her, including 10 years as a board director at the US National Academy of Sciences. There, she oversaw the evaluation of the evidence on the likes of tobacco and asbestos. "While we waited and continued to evaluate the issues, millions of people were exposed," she says.

Devra Davis uses an old-school handset to get her message across. Credit:Nic Walker

Davis, 69, was involved with the first efforts to discourage smoking in the indoor environment because of the dangers of passive smoking, and notes that Australia was a world leader on this issue. "At the US National Academy of Sciences I saw how long it took for us to say, 'Maybe there shouldn't be smoking in the environment of children', " she says. "At one point, 70 per cent of surgeons in the US smoked," she adds, sounding justifiably incredulous.

Mobile phones, Davis says, are like tobacco in that they are widely used. "But, unlike tobacco, mobile phones play very valuable roles in society. They have transformed our ability to respond to emergencies and for us to communicate with each other at any time, from anywhere. On the dark side, mobile phone technology has also enabled terrorist groups to communicate with one another – and in a few cases to remotely detonate bombs."

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Though Davis missed the fact that the CSIRO here invented Wi-Fi ("Really? Did they?"), she is aware we led the world in making the wearing of seatbelts compulsory in cars. "So why don't you give everyone the right to know what's buried in every mobile phone?"

Good point. And one that she claims some success in achieving. Following the publication of her book, she says mobile-phone manufacturers worldwide started to include information on radiation. With the tone of a conjurer, Davis asks me to take out my iPhone and follow the path Settings/General/About/Legal/RF Exposure. While it is hard to verify her claim of being instrumental in having this mandated, the information appears on my iPhone in black and white. The lengthy screed includes the following: "To reduce exposure to RF energy, use a hands-free option, such as the built-in speaker phone, the supplied headphones or other similar accessories. Carry iPhone at least 5mm away from your body to ensure exposure levels remain at or below the as-tested levels."

Did you know you were supposed to carry your mobile away from your body? Hands up if you press your iPhone to your face while speaking? If, as Davis's many detractors say, the radiation admitted by the two-way microwave radios in mobile phones is so inert and harmless, why would these warnings exist?

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), radio-frequency waves are electromagnetic fields, and, unlike ionising radiation such as X-rays or gamma rays, can neither break chemical bonds nor cause ionisation in the human body. Game over, you might think. Except that, in 2011, as Davis is only too willing to point out, WHO added the following to its "key facts" on mobile phones: "The electromagnetic fields produced by mobile phones are classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as possibly carcinogenic to humans."

Confused? We've barely begun. Davis and those who agree with her claim that much of the research so far completed is industry-sponsored. "Sponsored research can induce publication bias," notes Davis. "So most industry-sponsored research finds no effect, while independent studies do find an effect."

In turn, Davis's detractors accuse her of misrepresenting facts and selectively reporting studies that support her argument.

Davis waves away such criticism. She says she is prepared to accept that the carcinogenic properties of mobile phone radiation are a bit of sideshow, a distraction. "I do think mobile phone radiation causes cancer and I do think there will be a tsunami of it, but I'll be dead by the time it is upon us," she says, pointing to the fact that after the dropping of nuclear bombs on Japanese cities during World War II, it took 40 years for brain cancers to appear in great numbers in exposed populations. More pressing, more urgent, and perhaps more obvious are the effects of mobile phone use on male fertility, on children and on unborn babies in the womb.

When it comes to male fertility problems, Davis has an Australian ally in Laureate Professor John Aitken of Newcastle University. She tells me that a study published by Aitken in 2009 involved taking tubes of semen from the same healthy man, and exposing one of them to mobile phone radiation. "After a few hours, if you looked at the sperm exposed to mobile phone radiation you could see changes in their shape, their number and the way they swim," she says, adding that the job of a sperm is like swimming from LA to Hawaii – and trying to hit a tiny target. "So why make their job any harder?"

Why don't you give everyone the right to know what's buried in every mobile phone?

Aitken's study found that radio frequency electromagnetic radiation decreases the motility and vitality of sperm. "These findings have clear implications for the safety of extensive mobile phone use by males of reproductive age, potentially affecting both their fertility and the health and wellbeing of their offspring," his study concluded.

Alarmed? Perhaps you should be, especially if you are a bloke and you carry your always-on mobile phone in your front trouser pocket, within cooee of your testicles. And even more so if you are currently trying to conceive a child. But it's not all about the blokes. In talks she gives at campuses around the world, Davis shows slides documenting prenatal DNA damage from mobile phone radiation that she claims results in reduced brain and testes growth, behavioural effects, and visible damage to the spinal cord and epithelium.

Davis is particularly horrified by the enrolment of infants in their parents' gadgets. "There is no reason whatsoever that anybody should be giving a cell phone to an infant in the crib, yet there are thousands of apps for babies in cribs," she observes. "If you must give a cell phone to a toddler, at least make sure it is in flight mode."

Though an ardent user of technology herself, Davis is concerned about the adverse physical effects of its overuse among the young. She points to recent studies indicating that prolonged exposure to the LED screens in iPhones and iPads can cause irreversible damage to the retina. As she regards me with her deep brown eyes, Davis adds that there is something dehumanising about spending nine hours a day looking at a screen rather than looking people in the eye. Davis is horrified by what she calls "e-zombies": parents who take their children to fancy restaurants where everyone gets out an iPad and they don't talk or even look at each other.

"This is the road we are travelling on," she says. "You can look up iMama, where in extreme cases babies believe the iPhone is their mother because that's where they mostly see their mother."

So what makes a woman with such a distinguished career behind her want to devote the rest of her life to these issues? "I now have five grandchildren," she says. "That two-year-old is going to be getting married in two months – that's what it feels like for me. You only get one shot, and they grow so fast. I don't want to see my grandchildren become evidence in somebody's research project."